On the contrary, my Ambassador helped me resolve many issues with my account and account point balance. She followed up to confirm the correct point totals were applied and returned to me after the Aug 18 conversions and Cat 7 drop in redemption cost. When I noticed or believed there were errors, she actually reconfirmed the numbers and corrected me. She helped me make my Choice Benefit for the “extra” 5 SNAs for 75 nights even after I’d already chosen 10 SNAs for reaching 50 nights well before Aug 18. She has followed up on numerous awards and points issues.

I think legacy SPG Ambassadors were much more helpful in this difficult transition period. I think new Ambassadors were having a much tougher time navigating this transition period. But I also think that many if not most of the new Ambassadors have been learning quickly, and issues that were tougher for them to handle or resolve in August and September are easier for them to handle and resolve now. That’s both because the IT has improved greatly and because new Ambassadors have had the chance to learn more in these challenging first few months.

Actually, my experiences perhaps are off the mean only compared with this relatively fringe audience on FlyerTalk. I doubt my experiences are quite as off the mean for the actual total population of Ambassador guests. Especially among those whose spending puts them in the neighborhood of Marriott’s new $20K spending threshold.

My Ambassador has fixed several points issues on my behalf resulting in large points refunds.

So far the only thing she hasn’t been able to help with is inability to see any activity for over 6 weeks. But to be fair, even William has not been able to help with that one.

but shouldn’t I be able to email a normal mailbox and have this sorted out quickly? I just don’t see it necessary to have a single point of contact to chase down points for me.

In the new Marriott I think this service is necessary since the platinum desk is so abysmal. In L-SPG I could chat or call in and get a helpful platinum person who could help track down lost points. I ideally would prefer a dedicated “super help desk” instead of a single point of contact.

Absolutely!

But you may be inadvertently ascribing the crime to the wrong group. Ambassadors and the Ambassador team handled emails and calls super well and were very responsive...until Aug 18.

Then Marriott screwed the pooch with an epic series of IT fiascos and asinine tech choices. The new IT eliminated the secure servers where Ambassadors saved vital information for their guests. The new IT changed Ambassador email addresses and/or servers, causing many if not most Ambassadors to never receive the emails sent to them or be able to access voicemail messages left for them. The new IT prevented emails that otherwise would have automatically forwarded to the General Ambassador service when your own Ambassador was unavailable/away. The new IT thereby also slowed the proces by which new Ambassador guests heard from the program and even were assigned their Ambassadors. The new IT also changed and often precluded Ambassadors from doing what previously were pretty routine tasks.

That’s all in addition to the inaccurate and incorrect details that were being caused by the merged IT systems. Ambassdors were just as out of the loop to fix those as anyone else until the IT people finally got around to them. They still are trying to fix IT errors.

The Ambassadors haven’t screwed up as much as the Marriott IT team and IT choices that crippled their ability to effectively do their jobs. Those IT mistakes are slowly being remedied, and so we are seeing better Ambassador results and the Ambassadors and Ambassador team finally are getting workable systems that actually allow them to do their jobs!

Of course, you’re always welcome to contact the regular Platinum line. But you’ll soon discover that Ambassadors are far more capable to help you once they have their systems working to let them do their jobs.

Been there and was assigned the “very best” ambassador. Again, the concept is great but just doesn’t have much value and cannot provide much value to the “average” ambassador level guest. It’s an average service at best and for anyone to try to claim it’s extraordinary is either an edge case or overstating the benefits their getting due solely to their ambassador.

I spent 9 months of no communications from my ambassador before being assigned my new one. With the new ambassador, I’ve never had any proactive communications and the three things I’ve reached out to were never taken care of. So much for the very best.

1. Missing hotel points from a stay - still pending since August
2. Booking at a higher category hotel (when the new points kicked in and weren’t bookable online) - after 1 week of no response I called in and booked myself
3. Contact name of a hotel personnel - I cannot get into the details

Great to have a single point of contact but when they cannot complete what I deem as simple task it’s hard to find the value in the program.